Microphones, speakers, audio controls and other audio devices have been provided with numerous ways in which to be mounted in both residential and commercial settings over many years. As computers have recently acquired more advanced audio capabilities, and as home televisions employing only built-in speakers have recently been supplanted by home entertainment systems incorporating numerous distinct speakers (i.e., speakers that are physically separate from a display) to provide higher quality sound, ever more ways of mounting multimedia devices, especially audio devices, have been devised.
However, with the growing prevalence of flat panel displays in both computer systems and home entertainment systems, the opportunity to provide the visual display function in a more compact and less visually objectionable form has spurred on a desire to implement audio components in ways that are also less visually objectionable. As a result, more compact forms of speakers and other audio components are being created.
In this transition to thinner displays and more compact audio devices, finding ways to conceal the plethora of cables interconnecting these devices has now become a more prominent issue. Before this transition, the sheer size of tube-based and rear-projection televisions and computer displays tended to have the effect of relegating the unsightly nature of numerous cables draped between devices to being a largely insubstantial issue. Indeed, the bulkier cabinetry of these displays was often relied upon to conceal such cables. However, with this present day transition to thinner displays, there is now at least a perceived opportunity to “clean up” the overall appearance of computer and home entertainment installations, and a decreasing willingness to tolerate the unsightly and cluttered appearance of so many cables.
However, although ever greater attention has been given to the design of flat panel displays and compact speakers to increasingly mitigate their visual impact on a home or office interior, solutions for the routing and concealment of cables to achieve the same effect have been somewhat lacking. In particular, the installation of compact speakers and microphones alongside flat panel displays, including flat panel computer displays and flat panel televisions, continues to be accompanied by an unsightly tangle of cabling conveying both power and various audio/visual signals. This is expected to become ever more of an issue as the distinction between computer and entertainment functions becomes ever more blurred, and as still other devices incorporating both audio and visual functionality (e.g., video phone systems) begin to become commonplace. As such convergences of functionality take hold, the tangle of cabling accompanying such devices is only expected to become worse.